The purpose of this web site is to provide an overall view of the ideas
and struggles of Leon Trotsky. Trotsky played a leading role, together with Lenin, during
the 1917 Russian Revolution. It was Trotsky who organised the Red Army as well as the
fightback against all the forces of reaction that were attempting to strangle the
revolution in blood.The Revolution Betrayed -
a Marxist masterpiece - a review by Alan Woods

After the Civil War and the death of
Lenin, unfortunately the Soviet Union remained isolated. One revolution after another
(Germany 1918, Hungary 1919, Italy 1920 and so on...) was defeated. The economy the
Bolsheviks had inherited from Tsarism was extremely underdeveloped. And in isolation from
the rest of the world, this meant that the material conditions for a rapid advance towards
socialism did not exist. In this situation a bureaucratic counter-revolution took place. A
bureaucratic elite raised itself above the working class.

Stalin and his regime represented the interests of this bureaucracy. But in order to
consolidate their control over society this bureaucracy had to eliminate the genuine
traditions of Bolshevism. Thus the struggle between Stalin's faction and the Left
Opposition, led by Trotsky, was a struggle between the genuine representatives of the
working class and the up-and-coming bureaucratic elite.

Trotsky led an implacable struggle against the Stalinist degeneration of the Soviet
Union. The Stalinist regime's response was to expel him from the Soviet Communist Party
and then exile him from the Soviet Union itself. Huge numbers of his supporters inside the
Soviet Union ended up in Stalin's camps from which they were never to return. From exile
Trotsky gathered supporters inside the Communist Parties with which he built the
International Left Opposition.

Trotsky alone defended the genuine traditions, ideas and methods of Marxism. This in
itself was a great achievement. But he went further: he was able to analyse and explain
the phenomenon of Stalinism and offer an alternative to this terribly deformed caricature
of what a genuinely healthy workers' state should be.

Today the fall of the Stalinist regimes in Russia and Eastern Europe has led to
confusion and demoralisation among many left activists, especially those from the
Communist Parties. A reading of Trotsky, especially his classic, The Revolution
Betrayed, can offer all these honest worker and youth activists an explanation of
what has happened and also a way out. On this site we provide on-line versions of many of
Trotsky's works (courtesy of the Marxist Internet Archive who have allowed us to mirror
their site) together with more recent articles and documents on the various aspects of
Trotsky's ideas.

For a more general application of Trotsky's method to the world of today, you should
also consult our In Defence of Marxism web
site.